Sunday, February 23, 2014

On Steam, The Castle Doctrine’s normal price is 15.99. At
launch, it was sold for 12.99 at a special launch discount. The developer has
made a firm declaration that after the launch discount, this game will never go on sale.

“This plan (where the
price rises slowly over time instead of starting high and getting deeply discounted
later) was widely discussed. For people who might want to buy the game, there
are no surprises on the horizon.” –Jason Rohrer

Jason goes on to talk about how putting games on sale screws
the fans. The problem is that we have a 10mb game that costs 16 bucks. If, as a
dev, your game is never going to go on sale, you need to come down in your
normal price in order to compensate.

Sales don’t screw fans. They screw devs out of launch sales.
My problem with this move is that Mr. Rohrer has done something for himself and
tried to tell us it’s for our own good.

This episode is up a little early to make sure it actually makes it out. A new baby is due in my family on Tuesday. Enjoy some talk about Steam games, TTT, bundles, Civilization III, and some bold bold words.